NEWPORT NETWORKS EYES CARRIER-CLASS SBC

Newport Networks will launch a new software revision for its 1460 Session Border Controller at Supercomm 2005 next week, calling the product the first true carrier-class SBC in terms of reliability, bandwidth utilization and profitability.

Among the most significant advances of version 2.0 is support for Geographic Service Resilience, which allows carriers to deploy SBCs in pairs to guard against both network and node failure.

“With this, there is no single point of failure,” said David Vant, vice president of marketing for Newport. “One of the things we're promoting is a redefinition of carrier class.”

The company follows the same architecture in its chassis, with two management cards and 12 universal card slots that can accommodate either optical or electrical interfaces. Thus far, most carriers have opted for the electrical versions, Vant said.

The new software also includes expanded traffic policing capabilities for regulating bandwidth across multiple connections. Additionally, Newport believes it is the only vendor offering link aggregation, which pushes traffic across eight physical links.

Perhaps reflecting the maturing market, Newport also bolstered capacity with the capability of each card to support more than 120,000 concurrent calls. According to Vant, that level will fit well with Tier-1 providers, who are being bombarded by capacity figures based on “sessions” that don't always compute.

“Let's just call it calls,” he said. “A session is a vague and misused term within the industry.”

Newport's announcement comes almost a year after a gaggle of SBC vendors exploded onto the scene. While some have been absorbed via acquisition, most are still hoping to cash in on a market expected to be worth $950 million by 2008.